by Drew Stepek
Finally, his truck turned over, he shifted into reverse and sped away backward down the street.
“Jeb! Where the hell are you going?” one of the gunman shrieked.
“Get back here, ya son of a bitch,” the passenger added as he started shooting at his own truck.
Unfortunately for them, Jeb didn’t bother to stop and wait for his comrades to run and catch a ride back to Redneck HQ. Rather, the chicken shit cowboy turned around and bumped his horn a few times to signify see you soon. One of the four remaining Minutemen turned around to see me, Linnwood, Luke Perry and Random leaning against the smashed-up ass of our truck.
“Run,” he advised his associates.
And they ran.
Linnwood put out his hand. “RJ. May I?”
I was doubled over, gasping for air. I lifted my arm up without looking at it and handed the gun to him.
“Thank you.” He ejected the clip that I was using from the gun and shoved in another.
“Hey, I thought you said that you were out.”
Linn grinned. “I wanted to see if you were strong enough to throw Chadwick.”
“Who’s Chadwick?” I asked.
Random interrupted. “The guy you were hiding under like a little girl.”
I scratched some blood off of my leg. “You mean Ian? Ian Ziering?”
“His name isn’t Ian.” Linnwood pressed the pistol against my temple. “He was a very old friend of mine.”
I shook my drenched hair. “If he was such a good friend, then why did you want me to try and throw him at their truck?”
He pulled the gun away. “He was already dead, asshole.”
“How did they even know where we were?” I remembered their appearance at the pharmacy. “How did they know where I was when I got attacked by the McCoys?”
He brought me in closer to him and breathed into my ear. “Jesus, Reynolds. How many times do I have to tell you who these asshole are? They’re the cleaners. They sweep up the mess left by things like us.”
I pushed him away. “Get off of me. How do they know?”
“Because they work for Rodderick, idiot.” He walked to the side of our truck and slapped his hand against the compressed flared fender. “Lukas, get this piece of shit started.” And then, he smacked Random on the butt. “Come on.”
“You don’t want me to come?” I asked.
As he and Random began jogging after the Rangers who retreated on foot he looked at me and answered. “You’re useless. Get those two corpses out of the back seats of the cab. Maybe wipe them down.”
Luke Perry did as he was told. So did I. After a couple of minutes, I heard some gunfire and a series of southern cries.
The Golden Aces Hotel was a single level motor lodge on the outskirts of Austin. It was a dump. The faded brown stucco building had rusted air conditioning units dripping a darker brown goo onto wilted potted plants. I imagined that the plants were supposed to camouflage the obvious health code violations, but whatever was in the sludge stunted the growth and killed the greenery. There was a soda machine near Eldritch’s door that desperately needed some attention because the lights inside flickered and buzzed. I shoved my hand into my pocket because a soda sounded nice, seeing as how my mouth was so dry.
“Do you guys have any change?” I asked Linnwood, Luke Perry and Random.
“Change?” Linnwood asked. “Why the fuck do you need change? Go get some from Dracula.”
“Come on, dude. Give me some change. I want to get a drink. My mouth feels like I’ve been chewing on a sand-filled cactus.”
He whipped out a fat money clip and handed me a fifty-dollar bill through the broken back window of the cab. “Here.”
I attempted to hand it back to him. “Do you have anything smaller?”
“Just take the money,” he sighed.
“Can you drop me around back?” I didn’t want the Perrys to know that Eldritch and I were the kidnappers of Pinball. They would, without thinking twice, kill us and then eat her or rip her into pieces for the fun of it. I doubted there was any reward for Pinball because I killed her parents and no one else except for the cable news channels seemed to care about her. That being said, and as fun as my bonding experience with the West Beverly Hills gangsters was, I knew that they were self-serving lunatics and they could turn on me like a pack of mongooses.
Linnwood took down a bullet of coke and then offered it to me. “Why? Do you need to wake up, too?”
I wisely rejected more drugs. The last thing that I wanted to do was storm into the room, bounce around like a maniac and scare the shit out of Pinball. “I just need to get my head together. Maybe I’ll barf and take a dump.”
“You’re such scum. Have you ever wondered why people hate heroin addicts?” Linn asked as he picked around in his nose. “Why don’t you wait to do all that until you get into the room? What? You don’t want your boyfriend to smell your stench?”
“I just need to get my shit together, Linn. I’ve had an exhausting couple of days.”
He slapped Luke on the arm. “Do it.”
Doing as he was told, Luke Perry shifted the truck into drive and drove slowly. I heard the sound of both rear tires rubbing up against the crushed backend.
We pulled around the back of the Golden Aces near a strip mall that had a Mex-taco restaurant, a liquor store and a beauty salon. The truck came to a stop under a broken street light.
Linnwood pulled out his phone. “What’s your number, RJ?”
I pulled out my phone and looked at it. “I don’t think I know.”
“Fuck, man. Call me.” I unlocked my phone and started dialing him as he read off his number. His phone buzzed and he declined answering it.
I stuck my head into the cab. “What, you’re not going to answer?”
“No, dummy.” He touched the screen and then added me to his contacts. Rather than adding my name, he simply wrote JUNKIE.
I started to get out of the back of the truck and I fist bumped Random Perry. “Nice, Linn.” I said. “I appreciate it.”
“At least I won’t forget who you are,” he said. “I’ll text you if or when I hear from Rodderick. Don’t expect anything to happen.”
I flipped up two fingers. “Peace.”
As I leapt off and they headed back to wherever they were staying, I heard Luke say, “Hey, don’t forget to ‘Keep Austin Weird’, loser.” They all laughed. The three remaining Blue Blooded Perrys were still the three biggest assholes in the world.
“Fuck you, Luke Perry,” I said to myself as I took off that terrible shirt and tucked it into my back pocket.
In an attempt to sober up a little, I walked up and down the street, across the parking lots and through the alleys to puke for about an hour. I stopped next to a dumpster to try and squat out a shit but I was constipated. I wasn’t looking forward to using a discarded Doritos bag as toilet paper, anyway. Instead, I just coughed up bloody bile and pissed a few times.
The area had a minimal traffic and almost no people, which I’m sure was part of Eldritch’s lay low plan. A plane soared by me in the sky above. It was a little closer than I was comfortable with, because I was terrified of flying things. I guessed that I was close to the airport but not a popular route from downtown Austin. We were still in the middle of South by Southwest and I hadn’t seen a headlight on either street near me since I had gotten there.
I walked back from the alley and looked at the businesses again in the strip mall. The liquor store was the only business open. I spit on my arms with what little fluid I had left inside of me and then plucked the tie dye from my pocket and started scrubbing all signs of blood off of my arms, chest and stomach. I strutted into the store as a shirtless Texan would and a tinny, distorted bell rang out. Turns out it was actually more of a head shop than a liquor store.
The burnout behind the counter nodded his head. “Zup, brah?” He had a fuzzy brown beard, blended into his long hair that was pulled back into a pony tail. He was wearing a black Bi
g Boys shirt with a giant anarchy symbol on it.
“Sweet.” I pointed to his shirt. “I love the Big Boys.”
He turned his back and sucked some THC out of a vape pen. “Whatever, dude. I, like, got it at, like, a thrift shop or whatever.”
I walked over to the drink fridge, opened it up and grabbed a Gatorade. I closed it and then looked at the fifty in my hand that Linnwood gave me. I reached back in for another bottle. “Yeah, they were a killer hardcore band.”
“Hardcore is lame, dude,” he said as he puffed out a huge cloud. “Fuckin’ poser.”
I didn’t respond. I walked toward the counter, waving my way through the fog. I stopped at a rack of t-shirts and sifted through them. One said High As Fuck. Another said Legalize Freedom and had a pot leaf mixed into the lettering. Yet another one said Natural Born Chiller and had Darwin’s evolutionary progression where a monkey evolved into the silhouette of some guy sitting down smoking a bong. The best shirt had a bootleg version of the Converse Chuck Taylor logo and said Pot Head All Stars.
I held up the Chuck Taylor shirt and pointed to the logo. “Do you have any shirts that aren’t weed related?”
He ignored me and picked up his phone and started scrolling through music.
“Excuse me.” I snapped my fingers.
He rolled his head back as if I was putting him out. “What?”
I pointed to the shirt again. “Do you have any non-stoner shirts?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you fuckin’ narc?”
“Narc? I just—”
He held up his phone and crushed his thumb into the volume button on the side. He closed his eyes and started waving his head back and forth.
I dropped the shirt on the floor and grabbed the High As Fuck shirt. It was black, whereas all the other shirts were green or even more ridiculous. As I was heading to the counter to pay, something caught my eye. It was one of those red, yellow and green Rasta hats with dreadlocks sewn into it. It reminded me of King Cobra. It wasn’t very cool, but it was marginally cooler than Pinball’s wig.
The dipshit at the counter yelled over whatever shit indie music he was jamming out to. “You gonna buy anything, you fuckin’ asshole?”
I wanted to kill him so badly but instead, I held up the hat. “How much is this?”
He turned around and started playing with a Rubik’s Cube like he didn’t hear me respond to his question.
I reached the counter and I put the hat, the shirt and the two bottles of Gatorade on the glass case that contained every kind of porcelain bowl and bong slider you can imagine, as well as random shit like papers, brass knuckles and zippo lighters. “Hey, man,” I said.
He didn’t answer, again.
I tried to reach across the display case to tug on his shirt but I couldn’t reach him.
“Hey, man,” I said again, this time louder.
He spun around tossed the Rubik’s Cube into the air. “What?”
“Jesus. I’ve been trying to get your attention.” I lifted the Rasta hat up again. “How much is this hat?”
He looked down at my items. “I don’t know.”
I held up the fifty. “I have money.”
He reached out toward the bill. “Let me see that.”
I reached in so he could grab it.
He snatched it from my fingers and then held it up to the light. He then shook his head, balled it up and threw it back at me. “It’s counterfeit, you fuckin’ convict.”
I bent over and picked up the money. I uncrumpled it, pulled it out with both hands and then smacked it face down on top of the hat. “It’s not counterfeit, shithead. How much is all this crap?”
He looked down at my items and shrugged his shoulders. “How am I supposed to know?”
I grabbed him by his shirt. “Because you work here. That’s how you know.”
“You smell like you hurled, you fuckin’ hobo,” he said as he slapped my hand off of his collar.
I started collecting my stuff. “How much?”
“Like fifty bucks, I guess.” He tossed a plastic bag at me.
I flicked the money at him. “This should cover it.” I put on the shirt and then I packed up the Rasta hat and the two bottles of Gatorade in the bag and headed out of the store.
“Come again,” he called out after me.
I resisted the urge to bounce back into the head shop and mutilate the jackass who accused me of being a poser, a convict, a bum, and a narc, among other things. The last thing that I wanted to do was draw any more attention to the cyclone of waste that I had somehow managed to leave in my path since I arrived in Austin. If the Minutemen really wanted to get me, it wouldn’t be too difficult to follow my breadcrumb trail of body parts and drugs across the city.
Several times I walked up to the door to Eldritch’s room and bent my wrist back to knock. Just as many times, I retreated back to the alley or across the street. I desperately tried to shake the drugs out of my system. I don’t really know why. I guess I didn’t want him to think that I was out having a good time while he was stuck with the kid.
My jaw clicked a little because it still wasn’t fully healed from getting pounded into cement. I sat down next to a dumpster and shoved my finger down my throat, guessing that drugs even though most of the garbage left over from my three-day binge, after my previous three-day binge, were still shimmering around.
StiLL wAiting oN thAt hEroin.
I expected that my super metabolism just ate the shit out of all the coke I did back in the garage with Linn, but I didn’t feel great and usually puking rattled my bones back to life.
After I was fairly certain that I had rid my body of everything down to the bile, I glanced down at the High as Fuck shirt I was wearing. A treasure it was not. But, it was better than the Keep Austin Weird shirt that made me the asshole for the better part of the day.
“High as fuck,” I said to myself in a burnout voice.
I looked across the street to the motel and sat back down next to the garbage. I figured if I sat there long enough, some sanitation workers would come put me out of my misery. That’s really how beaten I felt. I was on a useless crusade to save myself. I kept trying to insist that the entire trip to Austin was to vindicate Bait and Pinball from the predators that they were unfortunate enough to have to call their parents. I beat that into my head over and over again. If I said it enough times, it had to come true. I was doing the right thing. I was the hero. I was the one making the world a better place for children.
But the fact was that every miserable circle and gruesome path lead back to me. And there it was. It was all about me. My horrible decisions and my irresponsible, self-serving mountain of filth. The mountain was stacked high by the bodies of everyone I touched, spoke to, or had any type of contact with. It started with my mother and it was going to end with Pinball.
One of the yarn dreadlocks slithered its way out of the head shop bag. Memories of King Cobra bolted to his bed at The Cloth’s church latched on to the ball of guilt building inside me. I was one the one who brought that piece of shit The Habit into our world and she managed to tear it down from the inside. She brought down the leader… or at least the closest thing that we all ever had to a leader. It’s a shame that I spent so many years trying to take him down myself, only realizing that he was my closest ally when we had both seemingly reached the end of the road.
I pulled the Rasta hat fully out of the bag and looked at it, placing it on the cement like it was a dead rodent. I didn’t want to put it on because my hair was pretty coated in flesh, blood, and drugs.
As if my dreams were going to let me forget, I asked the hat, “I fucked up, huh?”
I don’t know if I really expected an answer. I suppose that it would have been nice to get some guidance from somewhere or someone other than The Gooch. I could have deflected the responsibility back to my whore of a mom for not aborting me. The fact that I asked questions of a hat with dreadlocks sewn into it rather than just knocking on El
dritch’s motel room door proved that I didn’t want to have to answer or explain my actions to anyone.
I picked up the hat and tugged on the elastic base as I made quiet Reggae rhythms. I put the hat over my hand like a puppet. “You’re a total scumbag,” I said with a Jamaican accent. “What er ya gonna do wit dat little girl?”
After twirling the hat around my finger for a few minutes, I got to my feet and dusted off my jeans. For a few seconds, I debated throwing the hat into the dumpster. Against my better judgment, I dropped it back into the plastic bag and finally headed over to the Golden Aces Hotel to face the music.
I looked at a pile of empty and cheap champagne bottles stacked up outside the door next to Eldritch’s room. Great, we’re staying next door to a hooker, I thought.
Even though the lights were on inside Eldritch’s room, I lightly scratched at the door. It was important to seem like I was being considerate. No one answered, so I knocked a little bit with the bottom of my palm. I held my hand over the decomposing air conditioning unit in the window. The synthetic warm breeze felt nice as it curled under my fingernails.
“I am coming,” Eldritch called out from behind the door.
I looked down. I wanted to give myself every second that I had to clear the coke rage from my eyes.
I heard the security chain hang and clink against the wood as the door peeped open.
“Look up,” he demanded.
“Can I come in?” I asked as I cleared the passages between my gums and teeth with my tongue.
He delicately lifted up my chin with his fingers. “Look up.” He then looked at my shirt and sighed.
I closed my eyes.
Then he closed the door, fully unhooked the chain lock and opened it. “Get in and be quiet. The Little One is sleeping.”
I dragged myself onto the carpet in the room, trying to avoid eye contact with him.
“Follow me,” he said as he led me to the back of the room, toward the bathroom.
As I crossed by her bed, Pinball shuffled around under the covers. I stopped for a second.